Home Camp news round up

• The 21st Century Living Project (a collaboration between the Universities of Surrey and Plymouth, Homebase, the Eden Project and Acona) has come up with some interesting results for home energy efficiency geeks. Given £500 to spend on environmental improvements, 80% of households took at least 1 energy saving measure. Information and incentives – it’s what works chaps.
• Although we know that chargers aren’t really the problem, it’s still nice to see some innovation that stops them vamping it up in your home. Hopefully this means we can all stop talking about the evils of phone chargers, and start worrying about the things that really matter.
• Nice video here on the internet of things as explained by fellow Home Camper @andysc – including a lovely metaphor which describes connecting up data as like growing a central nervous system for the planet.
• Loving this blow by blow walk through of the online dashboard for the Powerhouse Dynamics EMonitor. A circuit by circuit home energy monitoring system available in America for a hefty wack of dollar. What’s nice about it is the variety of visualizations which break down each of the energy guzzlers in the home. Apart from facilitating stalking your kids late night food habits, there’s no doubt that this could have some very nifty applications once you got your appliances talking to each other along the lines of the internet of things as explained above.
• PassivSystems home energy manager is certainly ticking the Economist’s boxes. The real appeal here is the clever automation which learns your habits and means you don’t have to remain switched on to your energy use all the time in order to optimize it. This fella will do it all for you.
• A further boost announced in the US to fund innovation in green infrastructure will focus on grid solutions, new transmission technologies and more energy-efficient air conditioners.
• Here at Home Camp we tend to get excited by the possibilities opened up by smart meters and the smart grid. But it seems smart meters aren’t flicking everyone’s switch and so the Smart Grid Coalition has been formed to find ways to communicate the benefits to consumers. I’m kind of surprised this didn’t occur to them before the backlash started to build – it’s fairly obvious that not everyone is going to be keen on change. To be really successful the Smart Grid Coalition should try and get some community groups into their team, otherwise they risk an ‘us vs. them’ situation and they won’t ever really get what people’s concerns actually are.
• Over on the Greenmonk blog it seems as if any European anti smart grid groups may not have so much to worry about – @tomraftery has his finger on the button when he says the problem is that the incentives just aren’t there for utilities to push forward the creation of smart grids.
• Here in Britain, the smart grid seems to be on course. The mainstream media has picked up on British Gas’s plans to get ahead of the game on mass installment of smart meters. More like a download of the press release than an analysis of whether this is a good idea or not, there are a few nuggets here on what looks likely to be the first big, fat smart meter roll out to 1m homes in the UK.
• Interested to hear that the team behind Tendril Vision studied behaviour economics as part of their approach to designing a new smart meter. But did they get it right? The Tendril Vision presents information on energy use in a continuous real time display, which its makers compare to a clock in style and function. But I can’t help thinking that you only ever look at a clock if you want to know the time. How will this device attract the attention of people who aren’t that interested by their energy use? I’m inclined to agree that it’s unlikely to work unless the device can actually provide real time pricing information and even then, in terms of behaviour change, you need to put the information where the eyeballs are already looking to get real results.
• Microsoft Hohm is now available to third party device makers.
• RS components are to become the exclusive global distributor for the Arduino, ever popular with the Home Camp community (via @stuartpoulton)
• The Google PowerMeter API is now available for all to publicly use who have a smart meter device. There’s been a lot of interest and some initial confusion around how to do this in the Home Camp Google Groups but @Riotgibbon has now cracked it and blogged it. We look forward to hearing more from him about how it works once the data starts coming through
• And finally, if you haven’t already, we seriously recommend that anyone interested in Home Camp check out @mikethebee’s fantastic weekly podcasts which comprehensively update on the latest news on a more regular basis.